breathing in and out

I've been learning a lot the last six months or so about "untethering" from Ev Bogue, thanks to his daily letters arriving in my in box. I've watched as he's untethered from many different things - people, places, possessions, thought processes - and wondered what sorts of things I may need to untether from.

As 2012 begins, I am in need of space. I am in need of time, breathing room, freedom from showing up everyday to something I'm not sure about anymore.

The truth is, the last few months I've been phoning it in most days. I show up to my family and I show up to my knitting needles with great passion, but I show up online with a heavy heart, wishing I could be somewhere else. I've thought about taking a break, I've contemplated starting a new space, and I've even thought about exiting online life completely.

In the end, exiting completely doesn't make sense; I love the friendships I've made here through this blog, I love tracking my life in this simple and effective way.

Taking a break has never worked - I'm back a week later, feeling guilty that I'm not showing up even if I'm not sure I want to be.

But the feeling lingered, nagged at me and pulled until I couldn't ignore it. I pondered what I wanted my online life to be about, and I kept coming back to charity knitting. I want, as simply as can be, to track the things I'm making for charity. The rest of my life? I enjoy sharing it on occasion, but my passion has increasingly become sharing not the rest of my life, or even minimalist pursuits, but charity knitting.

So it's time to honor that feeling, to lean into it and make a change - and that change is She Makes Hats.

I'll be blogging there exclusively going forward, so join in the conversation, won't you?